The present invention relates to the production of a continuous, contiguous series of individual pieces in which the individual pieces can be intermittently and irregularly passed to a feed station for their delivery to a sewing machine. In particular, the invention concerns an arrangement for making a continuous, contiguous series of individual fly strips connected by a slide fastener chain in the manufacture of closures for fly openings.
The present invention represents a unique and novel answer to the need for an automated system in the sewing art which can translate intermittent and irregularly delivered individual pieces into an aligned series arranged in end-to-end relation for high-speed passage through a sewing station without interruption of the sewing process. The invention addresses this need in an economical and efficient way and, by enabling the individual pieces to be successively supplied and acted upon by a sewing machine without interruption, increases sewing production rate.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,750,104 discloses a system for automatically attaching a plurality of fly strip pieces one after another to a continuous slide fastener chain. There, the fly strips are fed to an intermittently operable sewing machine one after another by means of feed rollers in timed relation to the intermittent operation of the sewing machine. A continuous length of fastener chain is continuously fed to the sewing machine for joining fastener chain to the fly strip pieces. This intermittent operation of the sewing machine is controlled by a photoelectric cell detector at the sewing station. The detector detects the completion of sewing of one fly strip when the trailing end of a sewn fly strip piece passes it to produce a "stop" signal not only to terminate the operation of the sewing machine but also to energize the feed rollers. Subsequently, the detector detects the arrival of the next fly strip when the leading end of the next fly strip piece passes it to produce a "start" signal to initiate the operation of the sewing machine. Since the sewing operation is halted repeatedly with this system, there is considerable waste of sewing machine on-time and only a limited rate of production of the trouser closures can be achieved.
The present invention is a significant advance and improvement in efficiency and economy over the prior art.